BONUS: Trump's Day One Promises

0:02President-elect Donald Trump has made a lot of promises for the first day of his presidency and he has made it clear he intends to keep them. I will govern by a simple motto. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. So what are some of those promises and how might he keep them? I'm Ian Martinez, that's Leila Faddle, and this is a bonus episode of Up First from NPR News. For Morning Edition this week, my co-host and I have been taking a deeper look at some of the promises the president-elect has made for his return to the White House from a pledge to pardon January 6th rioters and start mass deportations.

0:39To a commitment to get rid of the Department of Education, increase fossil fuel production, and rollback protections for transgender people. Stay with us to hear more about these Day One Promises.

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2:23This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from$15 a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for a three-month five-gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. We start with President-elect Donald Trump's vow to pardon hundreds of people convicted in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. I am inclined to pardon many of them.

2:59I can't say for every single one because a couple of them probably they got out of control. To dig deeper on this promise and a recent decision from the Supreme Court, I spoke with Kim Whaley. She's a legal scholar and author of the book Pardon Power. The Constitution in Article 2 just says that the president has the power to grant reprieves and pardons and it puts no express limits on a pardon. And although there's been some Supreme Court case law putting some constraints on the pardon, there is no law that would limit Donald Trump's ability to pardon the people who participated in the January 6th insurrection and ended up embroiled in the criminal justice system.

3:43So another thing that Trump promised was to fire the special prosecutor investigating him, Jack Smith, right away. And the investigations are being wound down now, as we understand it from the Department of Justice. But the Supreme Court decision that anything he does as president would be subject to presidential immunity. What does that mean? So I think what it means is that Donald Trump could direct his attorney general to abuse the massive power of the Department of Justice and law enforcement. So that's number one. The second is the pardon. Of course, the Supreme Court held that if the president uses his official power, law enforcement, surveillance power, investigative power, prosecutorial power, that kind of power cannot be subject to the rule of law.

4:31But the immunity ruling only applies to the president. It doesn't apply to people around the president. So he would have to get them to commit crimes on his behalf. And the way to do that would be to promise a pardon and then actually pardon them. So the pardon, when you add that with this immunity for the president's illegal acts so long as he uses his official power, it's sort of a recipe for a massive criminal enterprise in the White House. And he has said on the campaign trail that he would go after his political and personal opponents. That is what he said for quite a while. And law is all about incentives and disincentives.

5:16And we have laws in place to disincentivize behavior we don't like. We have stop signs to disincentivize driving in a way that's dangerous. But people will blow through those limits if there's no consequence. And right now, what the Supreme Court has done by injecting immunity into a constitution that does not have it is to change the incentives for presidents to basically lift any threat of consequences for abusing the massive power of the office. And of course, the framers of the constitution understood, as Madison said, if men were angels, we would not need government. The rules are now lifted.

5:53And this is a president who has promised with vitriol to prosecute and go after people who he believes have prosecuted him in unfair ways. So I think we can take him at his word or at least we should be prepared for that.

6:12Now that's one perspective on what the next president could do. Next up, one of the president-elect's signature campaign promises was on immigration. On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America. That'll leave this effort. Trump has tapped Tom Homan to be his administration's border czar. He's the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Examining what a mass deportation plan might look like, our co-host Steve Inskeep spoke with Andrew Seeley. He's president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization on immigration policy.

6:49I think the first thing we know he will almost certainly do is cancel humanitarian parole for people that received it, people who came through CBP-1, this app that people use to schedule an appointment to come across the border, people who came through the CHNB program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. He will go after people in these sort of tenuous statuses and eventually people who have temporary protected statuses, although that may take longer because they have to run their legal course. I think the second thing we'll see is changing guidelines for deportation for immigration customs enforcement officials so that they can arrest anyone and put them into deportation proceedings.

7:27That is something that changed under the Biden administration where they were primarily pursuing people who had criminal records or people who were a threat to national security. I think you're also going to see a shift on workplace raids and looking at places where employers are hiring people without documents, which was not happening for most of the Biden administration. And then I think we get into the big question marks. I mean, he's talked about using expanding detention facilities. That will almost certainly happen. But whether he'll be able to use military bases or not or other federal facilities and whether he will try and use the military itself.

7:59And that would require going back to the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798. And that will almost certainly be litigated in the courts. You mentioned the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. What is that? It gives power to the U.S. government to hold people who are foreign nationals living in the United States. It is supposed to be designed for a time of war or intense conflict. But I don't think there's any doubt that there are at least some people in the network of people around Donald Trump that are thinking that it could be used, you know, in the moment of what they perceive as an immigration. crisis. I'm not sure the courts would agree with that, but I would not be completely surprised if they try and see how far they can push it.

8:41It sounds like that's the kind of law that would be invoked if you had someone who doesn't have full status to be here, but they're waiting on a court hearing, or they have some reason or permission to remain in the United States for now. This would override that? That's how you'd use the Alien Enemies Act? Well, I think they'd want to use it for two purposes. One is to override due process, right, to make it easier to detain someone and deport them, and also so they could justify using the military, which I think is something that will get a lot of pushback from the U.S. Armed Forces. Use the military for what?

9:13For supporting, rounding up, and holding people who do not have legal status. Does it matter if someone who's here illegally is in a red state or a blue state? Enormously, yes. I mean, a lot of what the federal government will want to do in a Trump administration requires cooperation from state authorities. And we've seen this before. We saw I was during the last Trump administration. There were very successful enforcement efforts against people who were here illegally in red states because local law enforcement was willing to collaborate. It worked out much less effectively in blue states where local law enforcement wouldn't necessarily not collaborate at all, but they would not put large amounts of resources into collaborating on immigration enforcement.

9:54And so I think it will depend on where people live. I am curious if red states really want to be rid of their workforce, many of whom may be here without authorization. Does Iowa, for example, want to get rid of the workforce in meatpacking plants? Well, here's where you get into the tough part of this politically, which is that all the polls tell us that Americans are really concerned about the border, but they're also quite favorable to immigrants that are already integrated in their communities, right? They depend on them as part of the labor force. These are people whose kids go to school with their kids.

10:25I think if we see real mass deportations, it is going to generate a pushback.

10:34And Trump also promised this. We're going to take the Department of Education, close it. I'm going to close it. So this wouldn't mean your local public school is shuttered. It's actually state and local governments that operate public schools and universities. But the department gives federal assistance for education, and that's everything from college student loans to aid for public school special education. For more on Trump's promise to close the department, our co-host Steve Inskeep spoke with John Volant. He studies inequalities in schools with the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

11:07The U.S. Constitution doesn't say anything about schools or about education, and it kicks all of that work to the states. But over time, the federal government has come to play some really important roles, things like protecting students' civil rights, providing some compensatory funding to students in poverty and students with disabilities who would very likely be underserved if we relied entirely on state and local funding. So it is not an agency that is telling schools what to do. They're not defining curriculum. They're not telling schools which teachers they can hire or which books to use.

11:40They're really administering these programs that have been established through law over the last several decades. What is the substantive issue that makes this real for people who dislike the Department of Education? Are they saying, I really don't like the way the DOE is enforcing civil rights in my communities? I really don't like the way the DOE is making my district spend money on poor people. So some of the hot button issues that come up over time are really about civil rights enforcement. For example, the Biden administration put in some new regulations around Title IX that expanded the prohibition of sex-based discrimination to also include sexual orientation and gender identity.

12:16one of the more likely moves from the Trump administration will be getting rid of those regulations and changing the way that civil rights enforcement happens within the Department of Education. Aside from the social issues, is the Department of Education just a vehicle for a lot of money going to certain schools? That's a big part of what it does, particularly when we're talking about K-12 education. It is sending resources to schools that would otherwise be severely underfunded. We have a system in place in the U.S. where we fund schools through a combination of local, state, and federal sources.

12:50And local funding sources tend to be tilted in the direction of schools in higher wealth areas. And so you get that sort of inequality that is baked in. So part of what the federal government's role in this is, is to offset some of those advantages and disadvantages that come from a local and state system like that. Another way to describe it is that wealthy, more liberal blue areas are subsidizing more conservative, more rural, poorer, redder areas of the country in terms of education. Am I right? So the politics of this are really fascinating. So programs like Title I, which again provides these resources for students who need it most, they go not just to politically blue areas or big cities.

13:37They really go to all parts of the country. And in fact, if you look at the states that rely the most on Title I funding as a share of their per-pupil education spending, it's actually a bunch of red kind of rural states that get the largest share of funding from Title I. And so when you start to talk about shutting down the department or scaling back these programs, you run into opposition not just from Democrats who across the board oppose that kind of move, but actually a lot of congressional Republicans see the threat that it poses to their own constituents.

14:13President-elect Donald Trump has also committed to boosting America's fossil fuel industry. And we will drill baby drill. We're going to drill baby drill. And scrapping policies and laws that benefit green technologies, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, are on the list of things to do. Now, for insight into Trump's plans, I spoke with Duke University professor Brian Murray. He's an expert on energy and the environment. Trump has said that he will reverse the IRA by de-obligating any funds that were unspent and eliminating tax credits for zero carbon energy and electric vehicles and other clean energy activity.

14:49Let's get into then offshore wind. Donald Trump has also talked about eliminating regulations and even killing projects. How feasible would that be? Trump has been openly hostile to offshore wind for years. And ways that he can tamp down on offshore wind in the U.S. would be to offer, of course, no new leases, and then could eliminate the IRA tax credits specifically for offshore wind. Yeah, and that's one of his day one pledges to end offshore wind right away. Could he end it pretty quickly as he claims he wants to do? It's one thing to take action quickly. It's another thing to slow down the activity quickly.

15:26So there are a number of offshore wind facilities now under construction off the coast of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. And many of those will continue. However, if the tax credits are eliminated, that would need to go through Congress and it wouldn't happen on day one. If they were eliminated, that would put a lot of the private capital at risk right now because the investors of that private capital are planning on tax credits as part of the return that they're going to have on their investment. What about electric vehicles? How much would a Trump administration change what already is in mind for electric vehicle production and ownership?

16:05The demand for this has really been spurred a lot by the incentives for electric vehicles. One of the greatest beneficiaries of the tax credits has been battery manufacturers. So it may not be all that politically easy for President-elect Trump to go in and say, we're just going to stop all of the incentives associated with electric vehicles if it then leads to incentives for battery production in these parts of the country. So let's go to the fossil fuel industry. Donald Trump has promised to increase oil and gas production, even though the country has already set new records for oil and gas production under Biden's administration.

16:39So what can the new administration do to increase it even more than it already is? Well, you're right that currently the U.S. is and has been for several years the largest producer of oil and gas in the world. It's done so, though, with some restrictions on leasing and oil and gas extraction on federal lands. And so one thing that the Trump administration could do is to reduce those restrictions. They could rapidly increase oil, natural gas and coal production on federal lands. They could also call on Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act, which was used to establish national monuments where mineral and oil and gas extraction can occur.

17:17Would doing any or all of those things lead to lower energy costs for everyone else? So the U.S. is a large and important producer, but it's not the only producer in global markets. Increasing global supplies will generally reduce prices and increase consumption, and that would lead to more emissions.

17:39And to wrap up our week of Day One Promises, our co-host Michelle Martin took a closer look at this campaign promise. On Day One, I will sign an executive order instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age. They're not going to do it anymore. Michelle spoke to Jamie Taylor, a professor at the University of Toledo. She's written extensively about the transgender rights movement and public attitudes about transgender people. I just want to start with the clip we just played and Trump's promise to ban federal support for gender transition at any age.

18:13What's he talking about here? Is he talking about Medicaid and Medicare? Can he ban certain procedures from being paid for by these programs? There are several programs that would address health care for transgender people. These are Medicare, Medicaid, VA. And then there are things like the Affordable Care Act, where you have non-discrimination protections that may include trans people, depending on how the term sex is being interpreted. So the president can issue an executive order to instruct agencies to do this. And one of the things that we know with executive action on trans rights is it's not sticky.

18:50Executive action is going to be very impermanent. Here is the second part of that quote. I will declare that any hospital or health care provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of a minor youth no longer meets federal health and safety standards. They will be terminated from receiving federal funds effective immediately. Now, I think that what he's talking about here is what other people consider gender affirming care for minors. Do people see this differently from gender affirming care for adults? Yeah, I do think we need to make a distinction between health care for minors versus gender affirming health care for adults.

19:26And I think the politics on that is going to be different. The state, broadly speaking, has an obligation to protect minors. And so the politics of that is different for adults. I mean, what is the rational basis to deny an adult voluntary procedures to make their life better? So last year in a campaign speech, Trump made a specific reference to Title IX. He said this. The bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women's sports. So Title IX is part of the Civil Rights Act. It bans discrimination in schools and colleges. What is he saying he will do? Is he saying that this bill that he is proposing will bar transgender athletes from participating in college sports?

20:10I mean, can he do that? This is, again, something that has flip-flopped on how this is going to be interpreted. The Obama administration wanted to interpret Title IX inclusively of trans people. In the Trump administration, reversed course. The Biden administration, again, reversed course, but they weren't as willing to be as inclusive on sports. And so the Trump administration is almost certainly going to take the view that Title IX does not include protections for trans people in sport. But again, executive action is impermanent.

20:43And that's it for this Up First bonus episode for Friday, November 15th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm A. Martinez. How about giving Consider This from NPR Listen? We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Lisa Thompson and it was produced by Katie Klein. It was made in collaboration with the entire Morning Edition team and with our engineering and studio teams.

21:15Join us again on Monday.

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